Glencroft: Time to cripple cheap jobs plan

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kill off

THE GLENCROFT Knitwear dispute in Glasgow, where 15 women are fighting for union recognition and reinstatement, has now disappeared into the jungle of industrial tribunals, from which it is unlikely to emerge intact, if at all.

On November 26, the Industrial Iribunal in Glasgow held a preliminary hearing to establish whether or not there was a case to be heard.

You might think that 15 weeks on a picket line is in itself proof that there is a "case' worthy of consideration.

But not so in the Byzantine world of 'trades disputes' law. The question the prellminary hearing had answer was whether the strike began before the sackings or vice versa.

If the strike began before Newman, the firm's owner, sacked the 15 women, then, according to the law, the union has no grounds for complaint at all.

The tribunal rapidly got bogged down in a welter of trivial detail - but the women's evidence clearly showed the rabidly • anti-union attitude of Newman and his manager at Glencroft, Friedman.

"You'll come back on terms or not at all:

You'll never come back with a union - there'll be no union coming in here" Friedman was quoted as saying.

Evidence presented at the tribunal also showed up the role played by National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers (NUHKW) officials.

The worst thing about the tribunal is that it has transformed the basis on which the dispute is being fought. The outcome of the tribunal does not depend on labour movement mobilisation in support of the women. It depends on whether the NUHKW or Newman can find the slicker lawyer.

The tribunal has also been used as an excuse to kill off the picketing. At a meeting held on November 20, the women were pressurised into abandoning the picket lines by a national full-timer of the NUHKW and by John Henery, deputy general secretary of the Scottish TUC.

eduret the detonal wil but lie isolate the women from each other and defuse the whole dispute. Despite lasting six hours, last Thursday's hearing had to be adjourned for lack of time until January 19. And how many months after that before the industrial tribunal proper, assuming that the preliminary hearing decides that there is a case to answer?

Stan Crooke Oxfordshire Trades Councils conference Ireland Saturday, December 12 10 to 5 at West Oxford Community Centre, Binsey Lane, Oxford.

Delegates credentials

£3, observers £1.50 (unwaged £1), from Marie Campbell, 167 Walton St, Oxford. MANY workers are absolutely disgusted at the way the trade union leaders have sold out struggles for higher pay - BL settling at 3.8 per cent and the Confed at 5.1% -but how many of us would like to go three years without a pay rise, at a 'wage' of £23.50 a week, with travel and food taken all? and no bonus paid at all?

That's the prospect that faces youth who leave school today.

More than 400,000 youth are on the government 'Youth Opportunities Scheme'. . And it's not only poor wages that they suffer. Out of 2,065 reported accidets on YOPs last year, including five deaths and 23 lost limbs, only ten of them were liable for compensation under the 1973 Industrial Injuries Act.

If you are injured on a YOP scheme and have to take more than three weeks off work, you're automatically sacked. Most accidents are caused by lack of safety provision by employers who actually get paid by the government to take on YOP workers and then force them to do normal jobs with hardly any training.

We would expect the trade union movement to fight tooth and nail against this scheme. But the trade union leaders actually helped set it up, and it depends on the backing they give.

They are now being forced to warn of the 'danger' of YOPs being used as cheap labour. But all they offer to youth is talk of "knowing your rights' and vague improvements, no campaign andest then in the union, against this government.

It is the job of all trade union and Labour Party activists to make sure that the question of YOPs is taken up both at local and national level. Trades Councils can expose the YOPs schemes for what they are by conducting inquiries independent of the Government and the Manpower Services Commission. National unions and the TUC can cripple the Tories' plan to make this cheap labour compulsory by withdrawing all support. All unions and Labour Parties can go out to the YOP workers to get them organised into trade unions, demanding full union rates of pay and full union rights.

MIČK LIGGINS Police try to swamp Scotts picket